David Ploog wrote:
> You could also upload it to Mantis, but the diff files from your server
will be good enough. Does the patch work against current trunk?
It works against trunk as it was two weeks ago, so probably :).
> Thanks for the effort, I loved the original idea. Did you check the
comments chapayev got back then, for example from Enne?
Yes, I did. It's been significantly rebalanced from chapayev's original,
taking into account the feedback posted way back then. I suppose I should
give a quick summary of the changes:
* Two new allies, oklob saplings (cheap, for the early game) and burning
bushes (for the acid-resistant and invisible foes).
* Zotdef powers re-ordered and all costs rebalanced
* Summoned allies reworked (orange crystal statues are weaker, ice statues
more useful, oklobs slightly weaker)
* Ally AI improved: allies will target foes even if you're not around.
* Ally costs increase exponentially as the number of allies of that type
increases. (This mechanic actually works really well: it forces you to have
a mix of ally types, and also makes disaster recovery possible, as if a hard
wave blows away most of your ice statues then the cost of ice statues drops
significantly). This also means that there's a maximum number of allies of
each type you can have.
* Trap costs increase as the number of traps increase. This mechanic is less
well tested, but before I introduced it the late game became too easy due to
blade trap overload.
* Traps are more useful, as some allies dodge them, and critters charge
through them.
* Alarm traps give a direction indication ("You hear a blaring wail to the
southeast!"). Allies don't trigger them.
* The critter frequency and strength has been completely reworked, and is
generally harder
* Many themed waves (insects, gnolls, golems, ice, fire, giants,
butterflies, hounds, rats, etc), as well as branch-themed ones. Waves are
randomly chosen rather than being hardcoded on turncount.
* All waves finish with a named toughened boss critter, often a unique.
* You get warned if you try to step off the Orb and a critter is nearby
* Lots of loopholes plugged:
- It shouldn't be possible to leave the level (except for short
trips to the Abyss and to bazaars). It's possibly I've missed one here,
though.
- The time counter doesn't increase when you're off the level, so
you can't skip hard waves by hiding in a bazaar
- Critters will target friendly immobiles that are in their way, so
you can't plug the level with hostile oklobs
- Killing allies gives no xp
- Some gods are effectively removed: Fedhas would be a game-breaker
by creating deep water and blocking the path to the Orb, for example.
* Three new maps, although one of them's commented out as a change in the
pathfinding code somewhere between 0.6 and 0.7 makes it not work properly,
and I haven't had time to triage down exactly what.
I've spent a reasonable amount of time playtesting it, and the balance seems
roughly right to me. I have won it several times, but never without at least
a few points of rotting from a critter getting through to the Orb. The early
game is hard, the midgame is easier with the occasional "Oh no!" moment, and
the late game can be completely insane. The AI changes mean that your allies
can take care of things reasonably effectively when you're not there, but
only for a short while. As a result you end up bouncing round the map madly
putting out fires in the late game, which is great fun. Surviving the
midgame can be a little random (an unfortunate early golem wave with a named
electric golem boss can chew through your defences like they weren't there,
and if Boris turns up and summons a pile of '1's you're in deep deep
trouble), but then Crawl's like that :).
There are a couple of remaining bugs. Crawl's pathfinding code very
occasionally gets wedged, with the result that you end up with two critters
each trying to move onto the other, so that neither goes anywhere. I totally
failed to solve this one, resorting instead to a kludge whereby every now
and again monsters discard their current path and recalculate. The
pathfinding randomisation code I put in also hasn't had quite the effect I
wanted, so on some maps critters choose one path much more often than the
other, despite being the same length.
Mark.
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